Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, is trading in products or services using computer networks, such as the Internet. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. In particular, modern eCommerce typically uses the World Wide Web for at least one part of the transaction's life cycle. In recent years, there has been an explosive growth of eCommerce financial solutions provided by eCommerce financial institutions and third parties to facilitate various stages of settling eCommerce trades.
Many accounting applications offer application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable integration with eCommerce solutions by third parties. Using these APIs often requires the third party to have an intimate knowledge of the accounting structure of the accounting application, or to engage an accountant to help define the behavior of the integration and force a confusing and sometimes lengthy “Setup” process for the business user to customize how data will flow from the third party solution into the accounting application. This presents a tremendous challenge to business users and third party developers due to the explosive growth of eCommerce financial solutions.